Over half of them worked for Google within the past two years. This is across New York, San Francisco, and Mountain View. One of them said they had a friend that wanted to become a manager and they were made a manager just like that.

This can't be true.

I just went through a 2 day required training as a new manager. This is required training that has to be done within the first 6 months of you becoming a manager.

This has been a requirement for many years.

Source: I'm a googler

Edit: just to add, the same training is required for TLMs. The moment you get a direct report the training becomes mandatory. I suspect there must be some miscommunication from the folks you spoke with.

I think we may have a different definition of "training". A two day training session isn't anywhere near what a manager should be getting. Compare that to software engineering where you will get months of continuous mentorship.